USA – Cahokia Mounds - For the past few weeks, a group from the University of Bologna in Italy was excavating a site west of Monks Mound. "They're focusing on an enclosure first located in the 1960s," assistant site manager Bill Iseminger said. "It had bastions along it, a series of round and rectangular enclosures." As to what the structure's purpose might have been? For the ancient people who once built a great city that was the center of Mississippian culture for the entire metro-east and beyond, it could have been a marketplace, a house for visiting dignitaries or anything at all. "The bastions suggest a defensive feature to it," Iseminger said. The Italian team is not the only dig going on this summer at the mounds. Washington University will send a team to work on Mound 34, which is located several hundred feet east of the massive Monks Mound. Mound 34 once held a structure, but it is not yet known what it could have been. Iseminger said there was an old, amateur excavation in the 1950s, and Washington University has spent the past few summers reopening that excavation and using modern technology to find out more. "The area adjacent to (the mound) was a copper workshop; they can tell that from the remnants in the soil," Iseminger said. Even stains in the dirt can tell them details of the mysterious people who left only the mounds behind when they vanished, long before the settlers came, he said. "They can look at colors in the soil and see where roof supports and walls were, sometimes finding char from fires," Iseminger said. They know the Mississippians traveled and had connections far away, Iseminger said: They've found exotic materials like seashells, Oklahoman arrow points and shark's teeth not likely to be native to Illinois. But exactly what building stood atop Mound 34? They're still just guessing. "If it was on a mound, it could be a temple or other building of religious significance," Iseminger said. "The elite, more important people sometimes lived on the mound; priests or someone of high status." The in-house crew also will continue its examination of the palisade wall, a wooden fence constructed late in Cahokia's history that encircled the entire city and was rebuilt at least once. Its exact purpose is still unknown, Iseminger said.

USA – Squamish River. - It was a routine academic mission for geoscientist Pierre Friele, but it ended with a discovery that goes back more than 1600 years. Friele stumbled upon a prehistoric bowl and two cobble pestles while guiding a student researcher who was studying sediments along the Squamish River. He found the bowl in a bank along the Squamish River, in an area opposite the creek mouth flowing from Lake Lovely Water. Carbon dating has determined the historical artefacts are more than 1,600 years old, said Rudy Reimer, a professor of First Nations history and archaeology at SFU. Friele said when he found the artifacts, he estimated them to be thousands of years old based on the amount of sediment deposited. "It doesn't happen in an instant. Every time there's a flood, there is a little bit of sediment deposited on it. There would have been a village in this location for thousands of years," he said. The discovery was a fluke. As Friele's student busied himself studying the river sediments, Friele wandered along river bank. He stopped when he noticed something peculiar at one particular spot about three metres from the top of the bank: the colour of the earth was red, a sign of burning. Seeing the red markings, Friele dug a little deeper and noticed the earth change to a black charcoal hue. Once he knew it was a fire hearth, Friele kept cleaning the face of the bank until he noticed a dark spot and a fragment of a stone. More cleaning revealed two pestles made of copper and then a bowl lying upside down in the hearth. The bowl has decorative carvings on it. "It's a mortar and a pestle, and it could have been used for crushing seeds and food, or for making paints and dyes," Friele said.

CHINE – Taklimakan Desert - Ruins of an ancient Buddhist temple have been found in the largest Chinese desert, Taklimakan Desert, dating back to 1,500 years ago. The new finding has brought greater research material to historians who study the spread of Buddhism from India to China. In the autonomous region of Xinjiang Uygur, now a mainly muslim area, the temples main hall along with a rare structure surrounded by three square-shaped corridors as well as evidence of a huge Buddha statue that existed years ago have been uncovered after 2 months of excavation. the leading archaeologist of the excavation project said, “The hall is the largest of its kind found in the Taklimakan Desert since the first archaeologist came to work in the area in the 20th century (usa.chinadaily.com).” The ruins were found and are located south of the Taklimakan Desert, in the Tarim Basin, known as the Damago Oasis. The ruins are located in the ancient kingdom of Khotan, which is a Buddhist civilization believed to date back to the third century BC. One key connection that has been made to India is that temple corridors in India were square-shaped like the ones found in the Buddhist site. They gradually disappeared after the Southern and Northern Dynasties (AD 420-581). To date, it is considered the best site to determine and research how the religion traveled from India to China. Based on the size of the pedestal, the missing Buddha statue is said to have been at least 3 meters tall. Altogether, the hall walls, surround an area of 256 square meters. Mural paintings of Buddha’s feet and some auspicious animals are still visible on the corridor walls. They are painted in a Greco-Buddhist artistic style. Since 1901, over 10 Buddhist sites have been discovered by archaeologists from China, and excavations throughout China are presently going on to discover more sites which can add to the history of Buddhism in the country.